The rich diversity that is BR is vividly portrayed in words and pictures in this portrait of a typical day’s activity. Here is a fascinating way of looking at the organisation which the public loves and hates and - despite rationalisation and modernisation - still employs over 150,000 staff in a multitude of vocations ranging from railman to BRB chairman, from solicitor to director of industrial design.
The day in focus was a summer Friday - as ‘typical’ as any day can be, without major accident or even movement of the royal train but with a host of variations on familiar themes. Murray Brown, editor of Rail, and former editor of Jane’s Railway Year, has assembled the work of many writers and photographers who covered the length and breadth of Britain out on the rails, the stations and embankments. David St John Thomas contributes a moving account of one passenger’s day, itself encompassing many facets of BR.
From Wick and Thurso to Penzance, BR has 10,335 route miles, of which 8,887 are used by passenger trains which call at 2,426 stations. Something of the sheer scale indeed emerges in this unusual book - as does a variety of the services provided and of the rolling stock, much of it confined to small parts of the system.
The book contains a rich portrait of the activities and people, as well as the equipment and often historic and scenic backgrounds that make up this great industry: a wealth of human and train activity is described and illustrated in detail. Come aboard and enter the world of British Rail for one day, courtesy of the writers and photographers, many of whom were themselves surprised at what they found.